1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved method and system for circuit design and in particular, to a method and system for indicating a status of a circuit within a integrated circuit layout. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for dynamically indicating a status of a circuit within an integrated circuit layout.
2. Description of the Related Art
The manipulation of data in a data processing system is well known in the prior art. Data may be manipulated in many ways in a modern state-of- the-art data processing system: data accessing, data encoding, data communications, data compression, data conversion, data entry, data exchange, data filing, data linking, data locking, data manipulation, data modeling, data sorting, and data transferring. The large amounts of data that are available to the user of a modern state of the art data processing system often becomes overwhelming in magnitude and complexity.
As a result, graphic user interfaces have been developed to simplify the interface between a user and a data processing system. For example, in designing electronic circuits, such integrated circuit layouts, graphic user interfaces have been employed to aid a user in developing an integrated circuit. Often times, a designer moving or altering circuits within an integrated circuit layout is unable to determine whether the present location of a selected circuit or group of circuits is correct in its present location. The correctness or legality of circuits within an integrated circuit layout are determined when a simulation is run on the integrated circuit layout. In such systems, the designer is unable to determine whether the new location of a circuit or group of circuits is correct until the simulation is run after the circuit or circuits have been placed in a new location. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and system for indicating a status of a circuit or group of circuits within a circuit designs, such as an integrated circuit layout, without requiring a simulation of the design to be executed after placing the circuit or circuits in a new location.